by Lowry, Chris
But I bit.
"What Army guns?"
"Man am I glad you asked. You did a mighty fine job getting food for us out of that depot. The armory in Aniston is pretty much in the same shape. I figured since you had all this experience in getting us what we want, you wouldn't mind doing it again. Only this time with guns."
I grunted.
"I want you to bring me back machine guns and bullets," Bubba glared with red rimmed eyes. "I'm going to take over that camp at Talladega. It's time they had a proper leader."
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“I think that's a good idea,” I told him.
“It is a good idea.”
“But I think there's something you need to do first.”
“You trying to give me orders?”
I shook my head and glanced at the men on either side of me.
“How fast did you go through our food?”
I knew we didn't start out with too much. Thirty people go through a lot of food. He had sixteen men with him, and if they were as hungry as they looked, they tore through two or three cans each, which was pretty much all we had.
“That's why you're going to get me those guns,” said Overalls. “We ain't gonna be the ones banished out here to be hungry all the time. Damn Dixie Mafia come down here and think they can run the place even after all the dead start rising.”
The others agreed with him.
“We ain't gonna be zombie bait no more neither,” said Bubba. I could almost count the teeth in his jaw through the paper-thin skin on his cheeks.
These men were starving, either too reliant on their hunting skills or too lazy to scavenge.
But I had a solution.
“I brought you back a trailer of food.”
“And we thank you,” Overalls said. “We're gonna get tearing into that just as soon as you leave to go get me my guns.”
“It's just fruit,” I told him.
“Fruit?”
“Fruit cups. Peaches too I think.”
“Now why did you only bring us fruit?”
“That was what was in the trailer.”
“You didn't load it up with a bunch of different stuff?”
“They had the rigs sitting in a line already loaded.”
I watched his eyes light up with greed.
“How many rigs?”
“There were six,” I lied.
“So five more?”
He could count at least that high with his shoes on. I almost told him so.
“I checked. Beans in one, tuna in the next.”
“What else?” he rubbed his stomach in an unconscious gesture.
“I didn't check the others,” I looked around at his men. “But we could go back there with your guys and drive them all back here. You could have them all.”
Again the men rumbled their agreement. I could feel them fidgeting, shifts in their posture.
“I could just send them to bring it back and you to get my guns.”
I hadn't thought of that.
Dang. I wanted him to take a group back to the depot.
“That's another good idea,” I told him. “That's why you're the leader.”
“Then it's settled,” he dusted off his hands.
“There are still Z in the depot yard,” I told him. “And the woods are full of the ones that walked out when I opened up the gate.”
“You didn't kill them? Dummy. Then we will.”
“Bullets will draw more in. Do you have enough for all of them?”
“We got more than enough.”
But I saw his eyes flick to the men beside me. He was lying and I wondered for a moment if they had any bullets at all. If the one shot they sent into the bus was their last piece of ammunition.
Was that the reason he wanted me to hit the depot and armory by myself?
“How did you get past them?”
“Stake,” I lied. “Bat too.”
“What'd you do, just take a swing at them?”
“Like Babe Ruth.”
“I was always partial to Mark McGuire myself.”
I watched him think about it, watched him mull over his options. I could almost hear the hamster wheel creaking inside his moonshine soaked brain.
“Can you get us in quiet again?”
I nodded.
He turned to the man on my right.
“Bubba, load up half the boys and let's go get some more food. We're gonna eat like kings tonight. Leave the other half here to guard them that's left.”
He turned to me while Bubba divvied up the men, pulling eight into a crew cab pick up truck, four in the front, four in the bed.
“You coming with us,” said Overalls. “Get in back.”
I climbed into the back of the truck. The man who had been holding my arm on the left climbed in beside me, still playing guard. He rested his rifle between his legs.
I didn't like the barrel pointed in the direction of my head, but it looked like the safety was on.
Overalls jumped behind the wheel and fired up the truck. The two-hour walk would be a twenty minute drive back. I held on tight as half of the hillbilly platoon roared up the road toward the depot.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I had been thinking about this on my drive in the diesel back to their camp. I remembered what Malik's face looked like when we opened the trailer and found nothing but beans. He would remember the second trailer was full of fruit, if he wasn't tweaked out of his gourd.
I had hoped he would convince his little group of thieves to go back to the depot and take another truck.
He did.
The gate was open as we drove up.
“I thought you said they was six,” Bubba shouted.
I could see them milling about the two trucks remaining, trying to decide who was going to drive which one.
I couldn't have asked for a better scenario if I planned it.
“They're trying to steal your food,” I told Overalls through the open back window.
He took a swig of moonshine from his flask and growled.
“Come on boys.”
He jammed his foot on the accelerator of the truck and spun out in the gravel. I slammed an elbow into the hillbilly next to me, grabbed his rifle and rolled out of the truck as they took off inside the depot.
I landed hard, rolled over fighting for breath and made my knees. I took aim past the red crew cab and sent a shot toward Malik's group. I missed, but that didn't matter. They thought the shooting was coming from the hillbillies' truck and began firing back.
That caused the hillbillies to shoot.
I listened to the popping of rounds toward each other as I ran up the road toward the little town and left the two groups to fight it out.
I ran until I was out of breath, then kept going. Any second I expected to hear a truck roaring up behind me. They might try to run me down like I had the zombies, turn me into roadkill. They might pass me up and take potshots as they did. They could brag about taking down a moving target. Or worse they might catch me and take me back to the group, make me watch while they did horrible things to the kids, the women and the men.
It all played in my head as I ran. I took each image, and shoveled it like coal onto a raging fire to fuel me faster. Maybe not faster, but at least steady.
The gray sedan was still in the grass on the side of the road. I jumped in and twisted the ignition. It whirred but didn't catch.
“Damn it,” I muttered.
I hadn't checked the engine to see if it would start when I first found the car. I twisted the ignition again, but it just kept grinding and wouldn't catch.
I jumped out of the sedan and ran back up the road a half a mile to the next car. It was out of gas, but the battery might work. I popped the engine and worked on the connecting wires with my fingertips, but they were stuck fast.
I grunted.
My plan was falling apart. I didn't know how long the shootout at the depot would last, or what would happen. If Overalls and his squad
decided to hightail it back to their camp, they could do a lot of damage before I got there.
I left the hood up on the car and ran for town.
A zombie shambled out of a side street as I approached the Mart and I had to dance around her. She was a middle-aged woman in work coveralls that were ripped and shredded. One mottled breast hung out of a tear.
It made me laugh.
Z don't have much modesty.
I ran into the Mart and to the hardware section to grab a crescent wrench. I picked up a hammer, stuck a screwdriver in my pocket and wondered if I would need anything else.
The Z moaned in the open door as I approached, but a hammer blow to the forehead sent her to another place. Maybe.
The street was clear and I took a moment to pull the door to the Mart closed. I played a bunch of just in case scenarios in my head and chances were I'd never make it through this town again, especially once I found my kids.
But if we needed to, there wouldn't be zombies or other critters in the store when we came back.
I sprinted back to the second car, unhooked the battery and lugged it back to the sedan. It took a few minutes to hook it up and drop the used one on the side of the road and the engine chugged to life on the first turn of the key.
I dropped it in gear, jerked a turn across the road and even though my rule was to stick at a steady twenty-five, I redlined it back to the hillbilly camp.
It's how Overalls would have driven if he was racing there to beat me.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I stopped the sedan short of the road into the camp and pulled off into the grass. The rifle had eight rounds of ammunition.
One for each man Overalls had left to guard the group.
I marched next to the road until I was close, then angled through the woods and climbed up a tree on the edge of the clearing. It was the first one with branches low enough for me to reach.
I stopped twenty feet off the ground and looked out over the clearing.
The group was where I left them, the hillbillies scattered around and looking bored while they waited for the others to return.
I didn't know how much time I had as I studied each of them through the sights. This rifle didn't have a scope, and I wasn't sure how accurate it would be. I grew up being taught how to hunt, how to shoot and my grandfather dragged me into a dozen deer stands each year until I was old enough to protest.
I didn't like hunting.
I didn't like waiting for hours for the chance at a shot, and I remember one particularly brutal winter morning that he shot a deer and we chased a blood trail for miles as it struggled and suffered through the woods.
I was over it by then, but the skills stayed with me.
I didn't care for hunting, but shooting was second nature. I lined up the sights center mass on the first man, and practiced my swing to three others. I figured by the time I pulled the shot on that one, the rest would be moving.
I practiced the move again, took a deep breath and pulled the trigger on the release.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
Then the rest moved and tried to hide. I winged one in the shoulder and sent him spinning down as he ran.
The last two ducked behind the bus and I lost sight of them.
I slid down the tree as my group jumped up and ran for cover behind the hillbillies' other truck.
So far none of the men had started shooting back or thought to shoot into them, but the kid's were screaming and Byron was shouting. The wounded hillbilly was squealing in the dirt in front of the bus, rolling around in a widening pool of blood.
I moved into the camp, dropped to my stomach, and aimed under the bus.
One of the men moved and I took out his leg. He fell with a yell, then saw me and brought his rifle to bear.
We locked eyes and I sent my last bullet between his.
I was out of ammo with one guy left.
But he didn't know that.
Byron shouted for the kid's to be quiet and kept everyone behind the other truck. They were still exposed because hiding thirty people behind a long bed truck left a lot of room.
And I was very aware of the time.
I didn't know how much we had before more armed men came back.
I shoved up out of the dirt, flipped the rifle so I had it by the barrel and swung it like a driver into the head of the wounded man in front of the bus. He shut up with a loud crack.
The last one jumped around the front of the bus and screamed as he aimed at me. I winged the rifle at him and knocked his shot wide as he flinched.
That gave me time to drop, lift the dead man's gun and shoot his buddy with it.
I heard a small cheer go up from Byron's boy's.
Brian ran up to me.
“How many times do you think you can do that?”
“No more today,” I told him. “Get them loaded.”
Byron ran up with Hannah and they both hugged me.
“You did it,” he said, a grin threatening to split his face. Hannah kissed my cheek and started loading kids onto the bus.
“Get their guns.”
Byron directed Tyler and a few others to gather what they could, including our food stores into the bus.
We were loaded up and out of the camp in less than five minutes from the last hillbilly falling.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“You didn't hear what they said about them,” Harriet glared at me.
We hadn't talked much since she almost broke my eye socket with a punch worthy of the Champ. I couldn't blame her. She was mad that I didn't rescue her daughter Hannah from Byron, and didn't know her little girl had a plan.
Since then, she'd kept her distance.
The truth was she was scared of me. They all were.
I was okay with that because I still planned to leave the group. I just had to stop talking about it and do it. Once they were settled and safe so I could come back and find them after I found my kids. Or at least what happened to them.
“The guards were talking about the kids, how they're treated,” Harriet continued. “We have to help them.”
She and Peg were in front of me in the back of the bus. I was on the last seat, rifle across my knee and watching the road behind us.
If a red crew cab truck started chasing us, I was going to play turkey shoot with the driver.
“There are more of them there,” I answered without looking.
“Yes,” said Peg. “More children. They need our help.”
I didn't answer that one.
They probably did need our help, but I could think of three kids in particular who needed me. And I wasn't there for them.
The nightmares playing in my head couldn't be worse than what they were going through. I had done some really horrible things, actions that a more civilized me would have never considered before the Armageddon Z happened. I wanted them to be safe, I wanted them to be with me, and if they were in trouble, they needed me.
“We're going to find a safe place for us first.”
“First,” Peg crowed like it was a victory.
“Then I'm going to Arkansas.”
“You're still on that?” Harriet snapped. “There are real kids here you can help. Not imaginary ones who are probably ghosts by now.”
I shoved the stock of the rifle into Harriet's gut and folded her over. She retched on the floor as she fought for breath.
Peg reached for her, then took a look at me and backed up to the front of the bus.
That was the third time Harriet had said something about my kids. Words hurt. A punch to the gut hurts too.
I reached down and lifted her face up so she could see me while she tried to breath and brought my nose to a couple of inches of hers.
“I'm. Not. Going. To talk about this with you. Again.”
She nodded. I let her go and turned back to the road. I caught Byron smiling and nodding. The rest of the bus stared, the newbies hunched in their seats.
Hannah helped her mother up to l
imp back to the front of the bus.
“That isn't how you handle it,” she chided.
So I was someone to be handled?
Anna put her hand on my shoulder and I twitched. She kept it there, rubbing just above the burns and around the wounds, trying to calm me down.
It worked.
They thought I was just a guard dog, some Golem or something to be turned loose for protection or to save those who couldn't protect themselves, and then acted surprised when I snapped.
My brain was jumbling through images of my kids, the failures of years stacking up, the sacrificed Christmas' and missed birthdays they spent with their “family” and I was just Dad. Just someone who visited once a month or every other weekend.
I could feel the pounding of blood in my ears and tried to breath. I concentrated on the feeling of Anna's hand on my neck, on my shoulder, the cool tips of her fingers. I let the tension go out with a few long deep breathes.
I might have to apologize to Harriet. I shouldn't have reacted like that.
Even though we were still in battle mode, I had just killed eight men, more if you counted the Z and we were on the run hunting for safety. I shouldn't have hit her.
A tsunami of guilt roiled in my gut and I clamped it down, balled it up. My job was to protect this group, keep them safe, not hurt them.
They could say and feel how they wanted.
I was going to get them into a fortress, shore them up safely.
And then leave.
Brian slid into the seat across from me. Peg must have relieved him at the wheel.
“How you feeling pal?”
“Pretty freaking unappreciated.”
I finished the line from the best Christmas movie ever made.
“You want a Twinkie?”
I grimaced a smile. Anna kept her hands working. Like they both had a job to do. Reel me in.
“You know why they want to go to Talladega?”
“We're not,” I told him.
“I know that. You know that. But they were saying some really bad things about it. Bad stuff going down. And they thought you might help.”
